Lifestyle

I am irrationally enamored with the popular portrayal of the #vanlife movement, a whole subculture of people who have turned their backs on the idea of needing a big house, a yard, and a picket fence in favor of houses on wheels. A growing number of friends live contentedly-enough in their vans, trading space for the freedom to move about, and finding the best each season has to offer in different parts of the country. Even though I know that the life that happens beyond the edges of an Instagram photo isn’t always so rosy, a real part of me longs to join them. But not yet.

A demanding, more than 40 hour/week job, even if full-time remote, sucks up too much time. We own a house that actually makes us money, that we love, in a place that we love. And yet this dream lingers. I mean, look at the promise of this amazing self-driving, fully electric, AWD beauty! Perhaps when she comes online in 2022 I’ll be ready for van life.

Brian de Haaff wrote an interesting article about remote work myths that I want to come back to again sometime. But a quick notes on things I thought were interesting.

The title of the article is “Would you take an 8 percent pay cut to work from home?” and most of the comments are an answer to this question rather than to the actual content of the piece. (Marketers and content producers take note!) As a side note – my answer since I wouldn’t have accepted my current position if it had required relocation must be yes, since that would effectively have been a 100% pay cut. Right?

Most of the answers seemed to break into two categories – people defending the value of remote work (and, presumably, their paycheck), and people who don’t work from home suggesting that eliminating their time-consuming commute would provide more than 8% of value.

I hadn’t heard that IBM was going back on their remote work policy by bringing everyone in to some random location – a move or quit mandate. Possibly a way to lay people off without laying people off? Or did they find that too many people were taking advantage of the “just a paycheck” mentality?

That “just a paycheck” perception of remote work was a new one to me, and the most interesting part of the actual article. Because someone would actually submit an application that said, I really want to work for you so that I can collect a paycheck from you while working on my side-hustle?!? Are you freaking kidding me?

I’m slowly learning the vocabulary of people who don’t go into an office every day. Remote Worker. Digital Nomad. Digital Expat. Van Life. Slow Travel. WWOOFER. And then there is my new favorite, Location Independence. There’s a whole verbal world in here that I was formerly oblivious to.

A Remote Worker is simply someone who doesn’t work from the office. “I work remote” can mean that you work from home just up the street, or in a rented shared workspace because you want the comradery of an office, but the people you work with aren’t close by. You can do this a few days a week, or a few days a month. It just means that you don’t see your co-workers every single day, but it doesn’t imply that you travel.

A Digital Nomad on the other hand, is someone who takes advantage of the remote work situation to move around. There are a couple of different ways to approach this, and it depends a little on the work that you do. Some people travel constantly for work anyway – photographers, travel bloggers, riggers, outdoor education instructors – and so it makes sense to cut ties to a home base and just travel full time. The #vanlife community would fall into this group, spending a week here, and a week there. Maybe it’s someone who is on an extended road trip, but managing to find time to do a bit of freelance work, or managing an online business as they go. So far, my favorite bloggers in this space are Tamara & Chris, who have been traveling in their mini-van, Red Delicious, since 2013. I love all the travel and lifestyle tips on their site, and their positive, enthusiastic but never saccharine or sugar-coated perspective on what that lifestyle involves.

If the stress of constant travel becomes a bit too much, you might instead choose to engage in “slow travel”. Slow travel involves choosing a spot, and deciding to stay put for at least a few months – maybe a year. The first slow travelers I’ve come across were Jacob and Esther who spend a year in each city they live in, exploring the best the location has to offer, and not letting themselves become complacent, because if you only have 365 days to explore a place, you can’t rest on your laurels. You have to get out there and do it. These guys are a great resource for adventure trips.

Nora Dunn is more spontaneous in her style of travel, though I think she also falls under the label of slow traveler. Nora is also a travel/lifestyle writer, former financial planner and future shaman (probably), but makes her way around the world depending on what opportunities arise. She’s a wealth of information on things like how to find accommodations for free – via house-sitting, care-taking gigs, or by WWOOFING. Even Google isn’t sure if this acronym stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, or Willing Workers On Organic Farms, but the idea is that you trade a bit of labor in exchange for a place to stay. There are Organic Farms all over the world you can work at.

Then, there is the Digital Expat, who takes advantage of being free to live wherever she wants to in order to settle down in some other country. I recently browsed a forum where someone said he wanted to be a Digital Nomad, but he didn’t really like travel all that much. He just wanted to get out of his country. That guy was promptly labeled a Digital Expat and booted from the Nomad forum.

The thing that all these people have in common, in my mind at least, is that they are location independent. Thanks to the digital age, there are many paths to being free of location tyranny. Video conferencing, screen sharing, email, chat, and the good old telephone, has made communication easy enough, ubiquitous enough, that you can still be in touch with a team of people regardless of where you work. But, then what you do with that freedom? There are so many options!

I won’t do anything particularly special today with my special someone. But un-special includes extra long morning cuddles, having a delicious meal cooked for me, a wonderful and slightly sneaky few hours at the local ski area (in the middle of a work day), and lots of hugs, kisses and being told I’m loved.

The discipline teaches you to clear your mind, to develop discipline and focus. I always thought about it as enhancing my quality of life. Josh Waitzken uses it to train people to achieve high performance.

Of course, when you think about it, the connection is clear. And the tie between martial arts and meditation has always been overt. But have you really considered the power of mindfulness to lower your heart rate quickly during physical recovery, monitor your agitation and responses to aggression, or to think strategically in high pressure situations?

When Josh became a high-level performance trainer, he started trying to get his clients to try meditation. These powerhouse finance guys just rolled their eyes. But then, he started with physical performance.

He’d have them warm up, and then start cycling between heart rates of 170 and 140, asking his clients to focus on their breathing to get their heart rate down faster. Only once they were in tune with that – to the connection between their minds and their bodies – would he introduce the idea of meditation.

Josh is clearly an amazing guy with a lifetime of learning to deal with pressure and perform at a high level.

The chess prodigy who inspired Searching For Bobby Fisher (a movie which gets a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, by the way, if you’re looking for something to watch), he started learning chess at age 6, was beating chess masters by age 10, and was an International Master by age 16.

Although he hasn’t played chess competitively since 1999, he’s been busy with other incredible lifetime accomplishments. For example, he has many US national medals and a World Championship medal in Tai Chi Push Hands, and has a black belt in Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu. He’s also an author of two books, “Attacking Chess: Aggressive Strategies, Inside Moves from the U.S. Junior Chess Champion (1995)” and somewhat more recently ” The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance” (2008).

He’s also a proponent of the Wim Hoff method (even though a technical error almost got him killed while practicing it) and a guest on one my my favorite podcasts out there – The Tim Ferriss Show. You can catch Josh’s full interview there with many more interesting observations on everything from performance to parenting.

The very thought of getting rid of things makes me wince. I need to psych myself up to get rid of anything at all – books I’ve never read (but might one day want to open), bad pictures so blurry and poorly composed that I’m not sure what they are, shoes that hurt my feet. I’m a mess. My VIP resorts to donating items behind my back.

I blame this on my VIP. He was the one to recommend it to me after coming across the idea that although there are several circles of relationship intimacy – close friends and family, friends, acquaintances you have to attend to them all. Although your best investment may ultimately be with those in your most intimate circles, there are times when you do have to focus on those outer circles as well. Just remember to invest in the inner circles when the opportunity presents itself.

I found the first podcast I listened to (Random) a bit rambling, since they just provided answers to random questions from listeners. I did discover a few interesting ideas.

Far from being ascetics, these guys just have a wary relationship to material goods. One of them tried to go for a year without buying any material products (consumables like groceries and soap were OK). One thing he learned was that he had a habit of impulse buying small items. He’d see a mug he liked, and before he knew it, it was in his cart and on the checkout counter. The practice of being mindful of what you bring into your life reduces that. However, six or seven months into the experiment, he spilled a drink on his computer and destroyed it. He said he tried to make it work without a computer. He went to the library etc. But eventually, he decided that having a computer was just something that brought an extraordinary amount of convenience, pleasure and productivity into his life, so he went out and got a new one. Their approach seems to be that you don’t have to wall out all worldly possessions, you just need to consider carefully what you want to let in.

Most of what they said reminded my of my friend MW, who doesn’t seem to read a ton of mindfulness or self-help, but who I’ve found over several conversations practices many of the things the mindfulness gurus recommend. Every morning, he takes a little time to think of all the things he’s grateful for. He spends evenings in hand-written correspondence with friends. He exercises every day and aspires to a clean diet (only occasionally undermined by ice cream or a cheesecake). He even recently quit caffeine. He’s taken a strong stance on work life balance, and is willing to accept the consequences of those choices. And – he has a rule for himself that he has to want something for two weeks before he buys it. No impulse buying! He’s also recently taken stock of what he owns and wants to sell or donate many of the items that he doesn’t use often. He even used a phrase I heard a few times on the podcast. He wants to “release those items back into the world and let other people enjoy them.”

I’ve been thinking a fair bit about minimalism after another friend asked what I was going to do with all of my work clothes. Now that I work remotely, and it’s the quality of my work rather than the stylishness of my clothing that matters, I see a closet full of clothes and uncomfortable shoes collecting dust. Is it time to simplify?

I think I’ll go find MW, and listen to another podcast. Then, I’ll let you know.

My professional world got tipped sideways last June when we heard the announcement that my company had lost a big contract and jobs would almost certainly be on the line. They were. But it took months to figure out the exact ramifications. Who was going to stay and who was going to go? And now, nearly 9 months later, we finally all seem to be settling into our new roles.

For me, that includes the brand new experience of working exclusively from my home. My employers are headquartered on the far side of the continent, but they made an exception for me and have allowed me to stay put, and work remotely.

Mostly, this makes me ecstatic. I have a great job – a promotion over the one that I left behind, and an opportunity to learn new things. My VIP and I can stay in the house we built, in a beautiful location where VIP has a steady job. And the flexibility of the remote work situation has not been lost on me.

Friends pointed out early on that in Europe the “standard work day” would be shifted to the afternoon, leaving mornings open for exploration and adventure while still leaving time for a full work day later on. It’s not a vacation. Honest. I’m just “working remote”.

However, I’m also familiar enough with people who work remote full time to know that it’s not all stars, rainbows and working in your slippers either. Social and professional isolation. Boundary setting. Staying motivated and productive. These are all challenges that I was well-aware of when considering the option.

In preparation, I started researching and tried to anticipate the issues that would present the biggest challenges for me. I changed the guest bedroom into an office, and made that my “working space”. I put intentional effort into getting together with friends – even if it meant a long drive that used to be on my commute, but was now out of my way.

I read articles – many many articles – so many articles, that by the time I finally managed to pick up the book Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, I was already familiar with most of what they had to say. In fact, I’d already read several of the chapters of the book in article format.

(This seems to be a new style of book that I’ve been coming across more recently. It is really just a collection of articles by the author(s), sort of like a blog, but with the pretension of outside publication. Overall, I prefer actual books, with a consistent flow and the assumption that if you’ve mentioned something at length earlier, you don’t need to cover it all again three chapters later. Maybe I’ll write more about that later.)

However, I did get one new idea from the book that I’ve been trying to take advantage of as much as possible.

You can work from anywhere! No, no, stay with me. Before I read this book, I had imagined myself holed up in my home office most of the time – like AN office, just not THE office (European not-vacations being the exception). But the beauty of remote work goes beyond that. At 37 Signals (the author’s company) people work in the office part of the day, and then work from home. Or they work one day from a coffee shop and the next day from their living room. They work on airplanes, in hotel rooms, and on the beach if they can get a decent internet connection. It’s obvious. But at the same time, I didn’t really get it until just recently.

Of course, everything new is exciting, and I’ve only been at this ‘remote’ thing for a month. The realist in me is just waiting for The Dip. But for now it’s all so wonderfully exciting.

For more reading on remote working, I just ordered The Year Without Pants by Scott Berkun, about his experiences with remote work at Automattic, Inc., the company behind WordPress.com. I’ll let you know how that goes.

I haven’t even downloaded the book to my phone yet, but it’s already off to a good start. The title alone makes me smile, and I enjoyed the few articles I glanced through from Scott’s blog. The article on his favorite books is definitely one to return to.